Tag Archives: science

Paper summary: the world’s longest known series of parallel temperature data: Adelaide, 1887–1947

Parallel weather observations are crucial for combining historical weather observations with modern records, so we can accurately see what our climate was like back in time. Most datasets go for two or three years, but in Adelaide, Australia, Government Astronomer and Meteorologist Charles Todd and his team took measurements in two thermometer stands for almostContinue reading “Paper summary: the world’s longest known series of parallel temperature data: Adelaide, 1887–1947”

A week in the life of the free range researcher

Since returning to Australia in August, my working life has taken a comfy new shape. Don’t worry, I’m still rescuing data to improve our understanding of European weather and climate. But now I work from home, surrounded by magpies and hot pies, rather than mountains and the hot Mediterranean sun. As a remote researcher IContinue reading “A week in the life of the free range researcher”

Meeting your heroes

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to receive a ERASMUS+ Mobility Grant to visit one of the pillars of climate science, The University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. CRU is responsible for one of the most widely-used long-term climate datasets in the world, the HadCRUT record. It also has an impressively longContinue reading “Meeting your heroes”

What to do at EGU

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna, affectionately and efficiently known as EGU. Over 13,000 scientists from across the world get together for a week to discuss the centre of the earth, far flung space and everything, literally everything, located in between. Seeing soContinue reading “What to do at EGU”

Why we need old weather data

When people ask me what I do here, my standard response is “Soy investigadora, en el Centro de Cambio Climatic”. Most people take this to mean that I work with the political and economic solutions required to solve the diabolical problem of climate change (which they then quiz me about), but sadly this is not true.Continue reading “Why we need old weather data”

The week the paper was published

“Dear Dr Ashcroft, I am pleased to inform you that your paper has been accepted for publication.” Huzzah! Is there any sweeter sentence in the scientific world?! Maybe “the results are significant at the 99.9% confidence level (p<0.01)”.  But the opening line from this email I recently received is definitely up there. The accepted paper isContinue reading “The week the paper was published”

The week of our first journal club

With apologies to Tyler Durden… The research group at C3 is a small but dedicated bunch. There are only 15 of us, working in a range of fields from climate model downscaling to data homogenisation, from temperature extremes to model downscaling. The majority are women (including our director), and we are a mixture of localContinue reading “The week of our first journal club”

Extending the temperature record of southeastern Australia

This is a guest post that I was kindly invited to write for climanrecon.wordpress.com. Climanrecon is currently looking at the non-climatic features of the Bureau of Meteorology’s raw historical temperature observations, which are freely available online. As Neville Nicholls recently discussed in The Conversation, the more the merrier! Southeastern Australia is the most highly populatedContinue reading “Extending the temperature record of southeastern Australia”

The week of my first lecture

This week I filled in for a professor and gave my first ever lecture as a professional scientist to undergraduate students. Two hours of talking at second-year geography students about the climate of Australia. I now officially feel like an academic! Although I get nervous (who doesn’t), I usually like giving public presentations. After some training inContinue reading “The week of my first lecture”